Low Power Wide Area Networks (LPWANs) are a new type of wireless telecommunication network that allows long range communications at a lower bit rate among connected objects. In this regard, LPWANs have a much greater range than wireless local area networks (WLANs), but use less power than conventional mobile telecommunication networks. LPWANs aim to provide affordable connectivity to low power devices distributed over large geographical areas. Compared to a conventional mobile telecommunication network, a LPWAN may have lower bandwidth and may employ simpler transmission schemes requiring less processing power. As such LPWANs are well suited to the Internet of Things (IoT) where the end devices may be simple devices with low processing power, that connect occasionally to the network to upload or download small amounts of data.
Example LPWAN technologies include, but are not limited to, LoRaWAN and SIGFOX. It is envisaged that LPWANs will be rolled out primarily on a national level such that a LPWAN covers a whole country, although in some cases a LPWAN may extend over a smaller geographical area such as a state, province, region or city. In still other cases a LPWAN may span several countries. There may be several competing LPWANs within the same geographical area. A LPWAN may include a number of gateways that route traffic to and from a number of network servers.